LOS ANGELES  For someone who has made a career out
of make-believe, Drew Barrymore is having trouble shaking reality. She sits,
hands in her lap, at the Four Seasons Hotel, ostensibly to promote Riding
in Cars With Boys, opening today. But on this Sunday  the first day
of attacks on Afghanistan  Barrymore's mind is on other matters. "The
film is done, and I know we're supposed to be promoting it," she says, leaning
against co-star Brittany Murphy. "But your priorities shift in a time like this.
It's hard not to feel like everything you are and everything you do is trivial."

Still, Barrymore says she takes some strength in the message
of the film and believes audiences will, too.

"The movie is about finding love and trying to make it
work with your family so you're not alone," she says. "That's something everyone
is trying to do right now. They want to hear someone say, 'I love you.' "

Riding is the 20-year odyssey of Beverly Donofrio,
whose dreams of attending college and becoming a writer are derailed when she
becomes pregnant as a teen, then marries her drug-addicted boyfriend.

The film is based on Donofrio's 1990 memoir, Riding
in Cars with Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good.

The warts-and-all film, directed by Penny Marshall, is
an unflinching portrayal of a woman struggling to raise a son and get off welfare.
Donofrio often comes off as a self-centered and mediocre parent, more concerned
with her career than her child. That unflattering portrait, Barrymore says,
is what drew her to the part.

"I was so surprised that Hollywood was making such a truthful
portrayal of human nature," she says. "They didn't sugarcoat anything. The people
in it are not only flawed, they are unlikable at times in their selfishness.
They admit their mistakes. The film doesn't put an idealistic ribbon around
everything."

The lead role, says co-star Murphy, was made for Barrymore.

"I can't think of anyone playing that other than Drew,
because she's experienced a lot of the same things," she says. "Beverly had
rough experiences and shared them with the world. So has Drew."

Indeed, though only 26, Barrymore's well-documented life
of stardom, addiction and recovery would already make a compelling biopic. She
says she related to Donofrio's character, though still considered it "a risk,
but one that I wanted to take."

"The character provokes you," she says. "It's not all flowers
and butterflies. There are dark sides and selfish moments. But what's redeeming
about it is that you can triumph in the end. Not in a Hollywood way, where it
all comes together in the end. It's a slow burn. She's flawed, but she is who
she is, and she makes her life better."

Murphy, who also stars in the Michael Douglas thriller
Don't Say a Word, plays Donofrio's best friend, Fay Forrester. She says
the on-screen friendship quickly became a real one.

"She was my role model growing up," Murphy, 24, says. "But
once we met, we immediately clicked. It was like an old girlfriend I had known
for years. We laughed and joked through the whole thing."

Both, however, say their moods have been solemn since Sept.
11. Murphy was in Manhattan with her mother that day and watched the twin towers
collapse.

"I know we're in the movies, and people pay attention to
celebrities," Murphy says. "But I watched those firefighters work, and they
are like gods to me now. I was born in New Jersey, but I became a New Yorker
that day."

Barrymore, too, says moviemaking seems a banal pursuit
after the attacks. "For the first time in my life, I feel like I don't know
how to do my job," she says. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do, or how I'm
supposed to act."

But she hopes her film offers some escape from the grim
reality of the past month.

"After this happened, I studied a lot of the films that
came out during World War II and the Vietnam War," she says. "I was amazed to
see that a lot of the films were not only light in tone, but that people still
liked to go to them. Movies were still necessary. It gives me hope when I start
to think my job is trivial."